Ramblin' Man
by Unique
Summary: My friend wanted a story about how Lucas ended up on SeaQuest where Lucas's parents are not abusive and do actually love him.


Lucas liked to travel. Well, that's not completely accurate. Lucas liked to see how far he could go before someone caught up with him. It was something of a game for him.

His therapist at college thought it was a desperate cry for parental attention. His tutor through what passed as high school thought it was a typical stunt that rich kids pulled because they had trust funds and the plebeians didn't. His parents thought he would grow out of it; otherwise they would have bought a homing device years ago. Lucas just thought it was fun.

It was also a challenge which is why I personally think he did it. Challenges are hard to find when you're an affluent child super-genius.

Once he was supposed to spend spring break with his father at a conference in Los Angeles. Of course, no one at the conference cared what he had to say about plate tectonics even though he had studied more than enough about geology to be conversant.

But then, Lucas knows too much about pretty much anything scientific. It's like he was born with a sponge for a brain.

After less than a day at the conference, Lucas was bored and more than a little pissed so he decided to take a little day trip to Barstow, California. A week into the second half of the semester and almost 2500 miles later, his father caught up with him in North Carolina still traveling along interstate 40 on his way to the ocean. The school wasn't too impressed which is probably how he ended up with a therapist.

Not that it hurt his grades. Catching up on his missed assignments was usually just enough work to keep him from being bored. It was a trick he used skillfully by the end of his first semester. If he scheduled two classes at the same time, he got a bit of a challenge from the catch-up and he doubled the amount of credit hours he could take. Somehow, I doubt he would have been as big of a hurry if he had known how little awaited him as a college graduate.

See, science is an expensive field to work in. The equipment for a single experiment can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars but people are willing to pay for it because success could earn millions. No one was going to risk that amount of money, much less their professional prestige, on a child no matter how many bachelor degrees he had. It might have been different if Lucas had had a Doctorate or even a Masters but graduate programs couldn't risk accepting him any more than the private sector. There are no Doogie Howser, MD's in real life. So, Lucas graduated as valedictorian, with the highest grade point average ever seen on the new scale, but had to watch as his classmates by-passed him, landing lucrative positions when he couldn't even find one.

He went to live with his father in San Diego where they rarely saw each other. Lucas bought himself a season pass to Sea World and spent his days watching the dolphins. At night he worked designing new computers and creating new software. It was a productive time for open-source resources on the internex. When that wasn't enough for him anymore, he began borrowing his father's labs to work on his own projects. He didn't have any friends around him but he was happy and, most telling, content to stay where he was.

But all good things must come to an end or so they say. Lawrence's latest life's work was nearing the final stages of development. He needed to be on site to supervise the installation of sensitive equipment. Unfortunately, he couldn't take Lucas with him to the World Power Hydroelectric Plant.

Yes, he's THAT Lawrence Wolenczak. In his defense, he didn't mean to almost destroy the Earth.

When he finally told Lucas, the conversation was civil but unpleasant. It went something like this:

Lawrence: You can't come with me.

Lucas: Why not?

Lawrence: A half-built power station is no place for a teenager. You would be bored out of your mind.

Lucas: Then give me a job. You know I can do the work.

Lawrence: It's not that simple, Lucas. We're having enough problems financing this project. I can't afford to do anything that would risk losing the investors. I also have to think about the child-labor laws and insurance regulations."

Lucas: Fine. I understand. I'll stay here.

Lawrence: No, you're going back to Buffalo. I've arranged for you to do an internship.

Lucas: You mean you paid someone.

Lawrence: Yes.

Lucas: What about my life? My research?

Lawrence: The lease on this building ends when I move. I'm not paying for another one. You'll be just fine at the house in New York.

Lucas: And my work?

Lawrence: Has no backing, no resources, and no future. Take the job you've been offered and build your reputation. That's the only way anyone will take you seriously.

I paraphrased, of course, but the dialogue is pretty accurate. They were both so frustrated with the entire situation that they repeated the conversation, multiple times, to anyone who would listen.

Lucas hated the job his father got for him. He was supposed to be a lab assistant but they wouldn't even let him do data entry. He hated having to get up early. He hated being the office gopher, forced to fetch lunches and make coffee. It was humiliating and degrading and he hated every second of it. He told his father this during his infrequent phone call. So it came as no surprise to anyone, except perhaps the Buffalo office, when Lucas's boss called Lawrence one day to tell him that Lucas hadn't been to work in over a week.

Lawrence just sighed and hired a private detective to track his son. But the week turned into months with no trace of Lucas. None of his bank accounts were touched. It was as though an underground railroad, also known as the internex, had appeared out of no where to sweep Lucas away to freedom. Instead of growing more concerned as time went by, Lawrence began to forget that his son was missing. Without the constant updates on the search to remind him, it was all too easy to lose himself in the work that grew more demanding with each day. After one too many missed payments, the detective gave up on his search and went home to his new mistress, Lola.

No one really knows what Lucas did while he was missing. Although there was a mangled story involving a two-tailed monkey and the circus, but we was the drunken at the time of the telling so none of the audience really remembers it. Other than that one time, he doesn't talk about it. It's not a bad memory, I think, just a private one. He often smiles, if you ask him.

Eventually, he wound up in Orlando, Florida working as a waiter at Sea World. That much I know. In his spare time, he watched the dolphins and went dumpster diving for salvageable computer parts. It's amazing the things that people throw out because they think they're worthless.

Lucas stayed a missing-person until the night that someone called the police to report a break-in at Sea World. See, Lucas had this stupid idea that if you built this fancy-shmancy computer and mixed it with some crazy mad-scientist mojo, you could make dolphins talk. And between you and me, classified mumbo jumbo aside, it worked. So there he was discussing cuisine with the dolphins when the cops busted in and arrested him. Talk about a story to tell your grandkids.

Well, one thing led to another… Actually, it's more like the phone call to his father and the UEO's unexpected involvement due to some new clause regarding marine life led to another. Anyway, the point is Lucas was in tons of trouble and looking at jail time, or community service, or something heinous when his dad called to tell him that there was another option. The phone call went something like this:

Lawrence: Yo, yo, yo. You really screwed up this time.

Lucas: I know, but, like, the dolphins were totally asking for it.

Lawrence: Hush it. I'm sending you to the SeaQuest to live on the bottom of the ocean. Muwahaha!

Lucas: Man, you're nuttier than a thirty-pound fruit cake. I can't swim!

OK, so I made that one up.

And Lucas can swim.

The point is that Lucas was going to be in a lot of trouble until his father pulled a few strings and got him a spot on the UEO's new submarine. It wasn't as many strings as Lawrence made it seem, either. The UEO had heard about his talking-dolphin-device which was ground breaking work in interspecies communication. They couldn't wait to get their hands on him to see what he could make next.

Lucas wasn't too happy. What teenager wants to live on a boat full of adults? Plus, I think, he was worried it was going to end up like his lab assistant job, only without the escape route. But in the end, he agreed because he didn't have much choice and they promised to "let" him work on his device some more.

So that's how Lucas ended up on the SeaQuest. I don't really know much what he's doing there now. It's all kinds of classified and I'm out of the gossip loop. He seems to be happy there, though. They let him out for shore leave sometimes and he's always back on board when he's supposed to be.

That's unusual for someone who likes to travel the way Lucas does.


End file.
